Fat White Vampire Blues [Paperback]

Andrew Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

Jules Duchon was a real New Orleans vampire. Born and bred in the working-class Ninth Ward, bitten and smitten with the Big Easy. Driving through the French Quarter, stuck in a row of bumper-to-bumper cars that crept along Decatur Street like a caravan of bone-weary camels, Jules Duchon barely fit behind the steering wheel of his very big Cadillac taxicab. Even with the seat pushed all the way back.

Damn, he was hungry.

Jules stopped his cab, pressed the wobbly rocker switch that jerked the electric windows reluctantly to life, and stuck his head into the humid night air. “Hey, baby. You interested in some dinner?”

–from Fat White Vampire Blues

Vampire, nosferatu, creature of the night–whatever you call him–Jules Duchon has lived (so to speak) in New Orleans far longer than there have been drunk coeds on Bourbon Street. Weighing in at a whopping four hundred and fifty pounds, swelled up on the sweet, rich blood of people who consume the fattiest diet in the world, Jules is thankful he can’t see his reflection in a mirror. When he turns into a bat, he can’t get his big ol’ butt off the ground.

What’s worse, after more than a century of being undead, he’s watched his neighborhood truly go to hell–and now, a new vampire is looking to drive him out altogether. See, Jules had always been an equal opportunity kind of vampire. And while he would admit that the blood of a black woman is sweeter than the blood of a white man, Jules never drank more than his fair share of either. Enter Malice X . Young, cocky, and black, Malice warns Jules that his days of feasting on sisters and brothers are over. He tells Jules he’d better confine himself to white victims–or else face the consequences. And then, just to prove he isn’t kidding, Malice burns Jules’s house to the ground.

With the help of Maureen, the morbidly obese, stripper-vampire who made him, and Doodlebug, an undead cross-dresser who (literally) flies in from the coast– Jules must find a way to contend with the hurdles that life throws at him . . . without getting a stake through the heart. It’s enough to give a man the blues.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Vampires have problems, too, as shown in Fox's clever, wisecracking debut that never quite works as the tragicomedy it aspires to be. Taxi-driving vampire Jules Duchon weighs 350 pounds and is still gaining from drinking the blood of the citizens of New Orleans, whose rich, unhealthy diets are teeming with fatty lipids. Obesity's not his only problem. A flashy new black vampire in town-Malice X, a Superfly with fangs-has taken over his turf. Jules turns to Maureen, the super-sized stripper who "made" him for help, and Mo eventually calls on Jules's ex-buddy Doodlebug ("D.B.") for more aid. D.B., a lithe transvestite vampire who has had great success in California as a self-reliance guru, wisely allows Jules to follow his own path-for a while. When it becomes apparent that Jules has a lot to learn about being a vampire, D.B. is there to guide him. While the author pays obvious homage to A Confederacy of Dunces, the humor here fails to rise above the sitcom level. Jules is just plain dumb and his miseries are usually self-inflicted. Characters are mostly caricatures. Relationships and plot complexities-Jules's moral dilemma concerning his victims, his comic-book hero secret identity as the Hooded Terror with D.B. as his sidekick, his plan to turn a band of white supremacists into vampires-don't satisfactorily entwine. Although by the end a lot of blood has been spilled and Jules has learned his lesson in unlife, there's little of real substance to sink your teeth into.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Poor Jules Duchon. It isn't easy being a vampire in New Orleans. Potential victims' blood is filled with fat from the rich local cuisine, and so Jules is a whopping 463 pounds. He would like to diet, but, really, his life isn't too bad--until he walks into his house and finds tough-talking black vampire Malice X waiting for him. Annoyed that Jules has been feeding off black victims, Malice tells him to stick to his own kind. Shaken, Jules turns to his stripper ex, Maureen, the vampire who made him. She is as overweight as Jules and can't bear to have him around because he reminds her of her own heft. So she sends him to the High Crewe of Vlad Tepes, but they have "modernized" and no longer need to crudely hunt for victims. Things just get worse for Jules. The police confiscate his car, and after he feeds off a black mugger, Malice X retaliates by burning down his house. Jules briefly flees town but comes back and, with the help of Maureen and Doodlebug, a cross-dressing vampire whom Jules sired, he stands up to Malice X--not without dire and tragic consequences. Jules is an often hapless hero, but a sympathetic one, and readers of vampire fiction will delight in this droll parody of the genre. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345463331
• ISBN-13: 978-0345463333
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #911,655 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Fox was born in Miami Beach in 1964. His earliest exposure to the fantastic was watching the epic Japanese horror flick Destroy All Monsters at the age of three in the back of his parents' convertible at a drive-in. In 1994, he joined award-winning science fiction author George Alec Effinger's monthly writing workshop group in New Orleans. In 2003, Andrew married Dara Levinson; they now have three sons, Levi, Asher, and Judah. In 2009, he relocated his family to Northern Virginia so that he could take a job with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, after having worked many years for the Louisiana Office of Public Health and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He has also worked for Sagamore Children's Psychiatric Center in Long Island, taught musical theater and improv to children, overseen student programming at the New Orleans Hillel Foundation, and sold Saturn cars and trucks.

Andrew's first novel, Fat White Vampire Blues, published by Ballantine Books in 2003, was widely described as "Anne Rice meets A Confederacy of Dunces." It won the Ruthven Award for Best Vampire Fiction of 2003. Its sequel, Bride of the Fat White Vampire, was published in 2004. His most recent book to hit print, The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501, was published by Tachyon Publications in April, 2009. It was selected by Booklist as one of the Ten Best SF/Fantasy Novels of the Year and was first runner up for the Darrell Award, presented for best SF or fantasy novel written by a Mid-South author or set in the Mid-South. In 2006, he was one of the three winners of the Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Short Fiction Award for his story, "Raoul Wallenberg in Space." Recent projects include: The Bad Luck Spirits' Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a fantasy novel which intertwines a supernatural secret history of New Orleans with the events of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath; Fire on Iron, a steampunk dark fantasy novel set aboard ironclad gunboats during the Civil War; Ghostlands, an alternate history science-fantasy novel set in a world where the past refuses to remain buried; and The End of Daze, a theological/political fantasy-satire about the return of the Old Testament God to Earth.

Andrew Fox's website and blog can be found at:
www.fantasticalandrewfox.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lordy, folks, lighten UP!, October 18, 2003

By 

Ms. Standfast (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fat White Vampire Blues (Paperback)

I've just finished this book, and it's a rip. It's neither as clumsily written as some of the other reviews would lead you to think (in passages, it amounts to an *hommage* to its acknowledged forebear, CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, and sometimes rises to the same headlong style) nor the grave social screed other readers describe. (I often wonder when reading reviews: did we read the same book?)

Simply, it's one long misadventure, and like the larger-than-life Ignatius Reilly in DUNCES, Jules Duchon, obese vampire, is shoehorned out of a comfortable rut and confronted with one ghastly predicament after another. The stakes, you should pardon the expression, are life and death, and Fox manages to make the reader care what happens -- it's not just a comic diversion. But along the way, almost every cliche in vampire literature (and pulp thrillers generally) comes in for a spoof. If you transform into a mist, how exactly DO you cope with a stiff breeze? If you become a wolf, what are your feelings toward lady dogs? And if you're a vampire in overfed New Orleans, how the hell do you expect to end up looking like anyone but Paul Prudhomme? (Disappointed readers of the Yarbro Comte de Saint-Germain vampire series, which turned into a mass of repetitive and overwritten soft-pore corn, will especially appreciate the plus-size boff scenes. There are some things you should NOT pour in a vampire's hot tub!)After watching Anne Rice pull off one terrific novel and then grind out affectedly morbid, S&M-lite sequels on a lathe for years afterward, this was a long overdue guffaw.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fat White Vampire Blues, September 23, 2004

By 

Robert schindler - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fat White Vampire Blues (Paperback)

What Fun!! A bumbling, insecure vampire with a conscience (or at least a semi-conscience) After Ann Rice vampire novels ad nausium I never wanted to hear the word "vampire" again.............but this is delightful, and funny, and imaginative! A wonderful tour through New Orleans neighborhoods,culture and food ("the neon sign across the street reflected in the layer of grease on her red beans") the tour guide being vampire Jules Duchon whom you can't help rooting for no matter how many victims he "fangs"........I can't wait to read "Bride of the Fat White Vampire" next, and hope there are more to come!...........Beryl Schindler

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars weird and wonderful undead doings, July 18, 2003

By 

jon sanborne (brooklyn, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fat White Vampire Blues (Paperback)

"Fat White Vampire Blues", the new novel by Andrew Fox, is probably
one of the strangest books you could read this year, as well as one of
the most enjoyable. It's mandatory viewing for any fan of the
vampire/horror genre in general, and a good dietary supplement for
those whose summer reading is seriously lacking in pulpy, off-beat fun.

The fat white vampire in question is one Jules Duchon, New Orleans
born, bred and undead. And his blues is this: too much good livin'.
Too many years of feeding off the fat-rich blood that the veins of the Big
Easy have to offer have taken their toll on poor Jules: he now weighs
in at a staggering 450 pounds, & is worried he's contracting vampire
diabetes. He's definitely not the man (thing? undead fiend?) he used
to be, but still, the scariest fate awaiting him is that of a low-fat
diet--until Malice X enters his (un)life. Malice is the street-smart,
upstart and decidedly buff black vampire that demands that Jules curb his
feeding habits to "whites only", or face the consequences. Those
consequences are what make up the bulk of our bulky anti-hero's
off-kilter journey of self-discovery and liberation--one that seems to
delight in shuckin' and jivin' the reader in all sorts of unlikely and
very rewarding directions.

Sure, this is Jules' story, but the real star of the show here is New Orleans
itself. Its' fading locales and details are lovingly evoked by Fox in all
their delicate, eccentric hot-house glory, and the rhythms of that town
define the novel's rhythms: it is at turns funky, obtuse, ornery and whimsical.
Jules can't bear to change his ways anymore than he can bear the thought of
leaving his home town--no matter what Malice X threatens. One of the bittersweet
notes this novel hits is not of Jules' battle with the new flashy hip-hop culture
Malice represents (as opposed to the old school French Quarter jazz Jules and Fox
obviously loves so much), but that of another, undefined vampiric source: the
strip-malling of America, the encroachment of redundancy, where local
names are replaced by brand names, and every place is the same, no
matter where you are. Through Jules' eyes, we see New Orleans slowly
falling victim to this self-replicating virus--its' individuality
wiped clean bit by bit, block by block. Jules is wiser than we are.
He knows a bled-dry victim when he sees one. We simply line up to become one.

Old Jules also represents a big, flaming loogie in the face of the whole Anne Rice aristocratic undead pantheon---Fox is practically shouting, "Hey, lady! Take a look at what a real New Orleans bloodsucker looks like!" Ms. Rice even appears as a background character of sorts, in the form of local horror writer Agatha Longrain (yuk-yuk!), whose unholy offspring are the
pasty-faced, Goth-dressing vampiric wanna-be's clogging up Decatur
Street, blocking the way between Jules and his next calorie-rich,
home-grown meal.

Another strand of New Orleans DNA deeply entwined in the proceedings here is that of native son John Kennedy Toole's great cult-novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces." Jules and Ignatius J. Reilly share many qualities: they are both
obese mammas-boys out to find their way in the world, prone to endearing
delusions of grandeur as well as epic bouts of self-loathing. They
both represent in their own overwrought ways the twins of inspiration and
sloth that live in all of us--and so we cheer them on even they disgust
us, as we laugh at their fantastically elaborate foibles. Because they
are us, fully dressed in all our glory and (very literal) dirty
laundry. He is heavy, yes, but he's still my brother.

In the end, "Fat White Vampire Blues" is that odd bedfellow who wears
its high and low culture roots proudly, and helps to blur the
distinction between the two. It revels in the bayou-like miasmic
paste of its varied inspirations (pulp fiction, horror movies and comic
books, etc.), while turning over that mulch to find surprising tweaks
and flashes of light in those very genre-specific constrictions. Who knew
that a vampire's ability to take the form of a bat or wolf was both
tied to cultural prejudices and Einstein's theories on "Conservation of
Mass"? Well, Mr. Fox knew, apparently, and he's more than happy to pass that information onto us. He's cooked up a spicy gumbo of a book whose racial politics and potty-humor might make you a bit queasy at times, but like any good Bourbon Street drunk, you're still left asking for more.